Fair Trade - Part 1

“So, let me get this straight,” Chaz said while holding the bridge of his nose. “You’re a genie, and you can grant wishes.”

“That’s right.”

“And you can grant as many wishes as we want, but we both have to wish at the same time and we both have to agree on the wishes,” Chaz continued.

“Yup.”

“And the only things we can wish for is to physically alter something about our partner,” Luke chimed in with a finger in the air.

“You got it.”

“Ok, so, like, I can wish Luke was taller so long as he wishes I was taller too?”

“It doesn’t have to be the same wish,” the genie corrected. “You can wish for different things. Like, you can wish for your boyfriend to be taller so long as you get to be shorter, or fatter, or have blue eyes, or have bigger earlobes, or whatever.”

“Right, so the content of the wish is irrelevant, it’s the fact we can only make wishes one for one.” Chaz stopped squinting into his fist and looked straight at the genie.

“And you both have to agree to the wish,” the genie corrected again.

Chaz and Luke stared at each other for a few moments without speaking, then Chaz turned back to the Genie and said, “What the fuck kind of genie are you?”

“Look man, I don’t make the rules,” the genie replied, clearly having gone down this line of questioning many times in his immortal life. “I’m just here to test the bounds of your relationship. If you really love each other, you’ll both wind up with basically idealized versions of yourself. If you don’t, well, you’ll still probably wind up a few steps ahead of where you started. It’s a win-win no matter how you look at it so long as the two of you don’t fuckin’ hate each other.”

“Yeah, okay, fine, um…” Chaz trailed off, then he turned to Luke. “So what do you want?”

Luke had always considered himself average, but Chad didn’t. He felt that Luke was born with a gifted body--great hair, great eyes, great skin, tight body, nice cock, the whole nine yards. Chad, on the other hand, always felt that he’d been shafted in the looks department. Short, fat, hairy, and not particularly notably endowed. Of the two of them, he had the most room for improvement.

“Well, I guess there’s the obvious stuff,” Luke said. “We could turn back the clock, give ourselves 20-year-old bodies, heal whatever’s broken, that sort of thing.”

“Yeah, you’re right. Genie, make me 21,” Chad demanded.

The genie waggled a finger. “Ah, you can only make wishes of your lover. It’s the rules.”

“But if we both have to consent to whatever the wish is, what difference does it make?”

“Again, I don’t make the rules, I just enforce them.”

“Whatever,” Chad threw his hands in the air. “Make Luke 21 again.”

“And make Chad the same age too,” Luke added.

“It’s done.”

And it was. Chad watched crows feet lighten and then disappear from the corners of Luke’s eyes while Luke saw Chad shed a few pounds and correct his posture. Their complexions lightened, and they both felt more full of energy than they had in years.

“Wow, okay, you really work!”

The genie nodded beatifically, also used to this stage of the process.

“Well, now what?” Chad asked.

“Skies the limit,” Luke replied, “but I notice you just lost a few pounds there, butter bear. I’d wish to give them back and then some.”

Chad guffawed but then realized Luke was serious. He knew his boyfriend had always been a chaser, but the idea of gaining weight had never really appealed to Chad. If anything, he wanted to lose even more. He’d always been the fat guy, even as a teenager, and that had only gotten worse as he’d aged. For the first time in years, Chad could make out his toes over the mound of his own gut, and his 42-inch waist pants actually had an inch or two to spare.

He still had the perky man breasts he’d always had, but Chad suspected that was less from the weight and more from a slight hormone imbalance.

“Well, I definitely don’t want to be any fatter, so I guess that wish is out,” Chad said firmly. Luke appeared to deflate at the news, but his reaction seemed too planned to be genuine. Luke knew that Chad’s weight was a slight point of contention between them, and only Chad’s laziness to do anything about it had prevented that issue from really mattering. Chad didn’t diet, didn’t exercise, and never seemed to get beyond griping about how hard it was to find clothes that fit right.

Luke encouraged Chad’s overeating, but that was all he really needed to do in order to maintain his fat boyfriend.

“In that case, how about you wish me into a big fatty!” Luke was smiling comically at Chad’s open-mouthed stare. This was something he’d never even considered a possibility.

“Like, uh, how big?”

“I’ve seen guys around 350 pounds or so that I thought were really hot. That sounds about right to me,” Luke replied, still grinning. Chad paled at the thought. He’d always thought himself lucky for having bagged himself a more traditionally handsome boyfriend. He didn’t think there was anything he could gain that would make him give up Luke as he was now.

“No way, uh-uh.”

“Not even if I wished you to be thin?”

Chad thought about it--another thing he hadn’t considered. “Tempting, but no thanks. I like you as you are.”

“Fine,” Luke said, still smiling. It then clicked for Chad that Luke knew where this was going all along. He had a plan, and Chad was about to discover Luke’s second big move.